System and method for inputting text into electronic devices

ABSTRACT

A text prediction engine, a system comprising a text prediction engine, and a method for generating sequence predictions. The text prediction engine, system and method generate a final set of sequence predictions, each with an associated probability value.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is the National Stage of International Application No. PCT/GB2011/001419 filed Sep. 29, 2011, which claims the benefit of British Application No. 1016385.5, filed Sep. 29, 2010, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.

The present invention generally relates to a text prediction engine, system and method for inputting text into electronic devices.

Many existing inventions provide methods for enhancing text entry for users of electronic devices, utilising a wide range of techniques. However, it is believed that the disclosed system is the first to approach the problem of predicting the intended written text of a user using a robust, fully integrated probabilistic model.

In a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a text prediction engine comprising: at least one model configured to generate from an evidence source a first set of sequences with associated probability estimates; a probability generator configured to receive the set of first sequences with associated probability estimates and to generate a set of sequence predictions with associated probability values, wherein the probability values are approximately normalised over all possible sequence predictions generated by the probability generator given all of the possible sequences received by the probability generator.

Preferably, the text prediction engine comprises a prior model configured to generate a second set of sequences with associated probability estimates.

Preferably, the at least one model is configured to generate a first set of sequences based on the evidence source and an uncertainty in the evidence source. Preferably, the probability generator is configured to receive the first and second sets of sequences with associated probability estimates.

The probability generator is preferably configured to estimate a normalisation factor for the probability values by summing the probability values for the n most probable sequence predictions and a constant representative of the probability values for the remaining possible sequence predictions. The constant represents the probability values for the remaining possible sequence predictions generated by the at least one model and by the prior model.

The at least one model preferably comprises a plurality of models configured to generate a plurality of first sets of sequences with associated probability estimates. In one embodiment, the plurality of models are configured to generate the plurality of first sets of sequences from a plurality of evidence sources.

Preferably, the text prediction engine is part of a system and the user inputted text can be input into the system by one or more of user selection, character entry or voice recognition.

The text prediction engine is configured to weight the probability values of the sequence predictions according to the probability that the corresponding model comprises a given context sequence. In one embodiment, the plurality of models comprise a plurality of language models corresponding to a plurality of different languages and the prediction engine is configured to weight highest the probability values of the sequence predictions corresponding to the language model relating to the most likely language of user inputted text.

Each evidence source may be modelled by a corresponding model to generate the set of sequences with associated probability estimates. The probability generator is preferably configured to treat each evidence source as conditionally independent of all other evidence sources, given the set of sequence predictions.

In a preferred embodiment of the text prediction engine, the at least one model comprises a context model and an input model, each of which is configured to receive text input by a user and to generate a set of sequences and associated probability estimates; and the prior model comprises a target prior model configured to generate a set of sequences and associated probability estimates. The input model preferably comprises a candidate model and a language model. The context model preferably comprises a candidate model and a prefix match model. The target prior model preferably comprises a character model and a unigram model.

In a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a system comprising: a user interface configured to receive text input by a user; a text prediction engine configured to receive the text input from the user interface and to generate a set of sequence predictions with associated probability values, wherein the probability values are approximately normalised over all possible sequence predictions; wherein the text prediction engine is further configured to provide the set of sequence predictions to the user interface.

Preferably, the input model comprises a candidate model and a language model. Preferably, the context model comprises a candidate model and a prefix match model. Preferably, the target prior model comprises a character model and a unigram model.

In a third aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for processing user text input comprising: receiving text input into a user interface; generating, using a text prediction engine, a set of sequence predictions and associated probability values, wherein the probability values are approximately normalised over all possible sequence predictions; providing the set of sequence predictions to the user interface.

Generating normalised probability values preferably comprises estimating a normalisation factor for the probability values by summing the probability values for the n most probable sequence predictions and a constant representative of the remaining possible sequence predictions.

The method may further comprise displaying the set of sequence predictions on the user interface for user selection. Preferably, the sequence predictions are ordered by the text prediction engine for ordered display by the user interface. The sequence predictions may be provided to the user interface only if their corresponding probability values are each greater than or equal a first threshold value. Similarly, the system may be configured to provide to the user interface predictions only if their corresponding probability values are each greater than or equal a first threshold value.

Preferably, the at least one of the set of sequence predictions corresponds to an adjusted or corrected version of text input by a user into the user interface.

The method may further comprise inputting automatically a sequence prediction which has a probability value greater than or above a second threshold value. Similarly, in one embodiment, the system may be configured to input automatically a sequence prediction which has a probability value greater than or above a second threshold value.

The probability generator used in the method preferably comprises a plurality of models, each configured to generate a set of sequence predictions and associated probability values, and the probability values are weighted according to the probability that the corresponding model comprises a given context sequence.

The present invention also provides a computer program product comprising a computer readable medium having stored thereon computer program means for causing a processor to carry out the methods as described above.

The invention also relates to a text prediction engine for generating sequence predictions, and a system and method for generating sequence predictions for display and user selection. In one embodiment, the invention relates to a system for automatically correcting an erroneously entered sequence, and a method for doing so. In a preferred embodiment, the present invention provides a text prediction engine, a system and method for generating a final set of sequence predictions, each with an associated probability value, by combining any number of separate probability estimates for sequence intentions. The present prediction engine, system and method can therefore provide predictions which are based on any number of independent evidence sources. This can be achieved by the assignment of a true probability to each of the predicted sequences, rather than just a ranking over sequences. By assigning true probability values, evolution of the probabilities assigned to different terms can be analysed and probabilities for a given term, or set of terms, at two different points in time can be compared. This means that a-priori thresholding can be utilised to moderate the behaviour of the system given its “confidence” in a particular prediction. For instance, a predicted sequence might only be displayed, or an automatic correction made, if the system estimates the probability of accuracy at over 0.75, or in other words if there is at least a 75% chance that the predicted sequence is accurate. This type of inference is impossible if some kind of ad-hoc score is used to rank elements, as such values cannot be reliably compared between sequences over time.

To generate the true probability values, the present invention preferably provides a means for efficiently approximating the normalisation sum over all sequences.

The present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a schematic of a high level prediction architecture according to the invention;

FIG. 2 is a schematic of an example of a preferred prediction architecture according to the present invention.

DEFINITIONS

-   -   character—a symbol representing an atomic orthographic unit     -   character set—a finite collection of characters     -   sequence—a finite length, ordered string of characters     -   prefix—one sequence s is a prefix of another s′ if, beginning         with the first character in each sequence, there is a         contiguous, one-to-one mapping and length(s)≦length(s′).     -   proper prefix—one sequence s is a proper prefix of another s′         ifs is a prefix of s′ and length(s)<length(s′).     -   language—a (usually infinite) set of sequences characteristic of         a particular written or spoken community     -   text—written data drawn from one or more languages     -   system—the subject of this disclosure     -   user—an intentional agent interacting with the system

In general, but not exclusive terms, the system of the invention can be implemented as shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of one high level text prediction architecture according to the invention. The system comprises a text prediction engine which generates a set of most likely sequence predictions S_(F) intended to be entered by the user. Each sequence prediction has a probability value associated with it.

As can be seen from FIG. 1, the text prediction engine preferably comprises a plurality of trained models M₁, M₂, M₃ etc. that will be used to make probabilistic inferences from a plurality of evidence sources e₁, e₂, e₃, etc.; and a probability generator (PG). However, in other embodiments, there may be a single trained model and single evidence source.

There are arbitrarily many potential sources of evidence e₁, e₂, etc. Some examples of which include:

-   -   the sequence the user has already entered     -   the term/phrase the user is currently entering     -   stored, historical sequences entered by the user     -   the user's native language     -   the specific style of language being entered     -   the application in which the current sequence is being entered     -   in a messaging environment, the intended message recipient     -   the time/date     -   the location of the device hosting the system         General Model

The aim of the system is to rank sequences in a given subset of a language by the likelihood that the user intended/intends to enter that sequence. In probabilistic terms, this equates to a ranking over sequences in a set S governed by the following: P(s∈S|e,M)  (1) where e is the observed evidence, and M is the set of trained models that will be used to make probabilistic inferences. In other words, the system will estimate the conditional probability, over the set of all sequences from which predictions can be drawn, of the sequence given the evidence e. The target sequence is denoted by s.

In order to simplify the process of combining predictions from different data sources, in a preferred embodiment, the target sequence, s, is defined as a prediction which comes from a specific data source.

Each model in M is trained on a particular data source. Thus, a particular data source is represented by a model in M, and the set S in expression (1) ranges over all distinct terms (or sequences) generated by the models in M. A model is queried to provide a predicted term. This term is associated with the model from which it was drawn, and is therefore different from a lexically identical term drawn from a different model, due to its association with the model from which it was drawn. This association can be implicit in the data. However, the term could be tagged with an identifier associated with the model from which it has been drawn.

In this preferred process of combining predictions, two otherwise identical predictions that come from different data sources are considered different. To combine sequences from different models to get a list of predictions, the sequences are simply ranked with duplicate predictions removed. In the preferred implementation, the most probable estimate is retained for a given lexical term/sequence and any (less probable) lexical duplicates are discarded.

By way of a non-limiting example, if M comprises two context language models, French (LM_(French)) and English (LM_(English)), the term “pain” will probably occur in both, and will appear twice in S, once linked with the French model and once with the English model. This will result in two separate estimates for the term “pain” given a particular set of evidence (where the evidence in this case is the context which precedes the predicted term “pain”).

These estimates refer to two distinct sequences (one from French, one from English); however, because they are lexically identical, it is not necessary to present them both to the user. Thus, in accordance with the preferred embodiment, the most probable estimate for a given lexical sequence is retained and any lexical duplicates are discarded.

In order to rank sequences in a given subset of a language by the likelihood that the user intended/intends to enter that sequence, the conditional probability of expression (1), P(s∈S|e, M), needs to be calculated. To determine this probability, the expression is rearranged using Bayes' rule to yield:

$\begin{matrix} \frac{{P\left( {\left. e \middle| s \right.,M} \right)}{P\left( s \middle| M \right)}}{P\left( e \middle| M \right)} & (2) \end{matrix}$ and marginalised over target sequences in the denominator to yield:

$\begin{matrix} \frac{{P\left( {\left. e \middle| s \right.,M} \right)}{P\left( s \middle| M \right)}}{\sum\limits_{j = 1}^{S}{{P\left( {\left. e \middle| s_{j} \right.,M} \right)}{P\left( s_{j} \middle| M \right)}}} & (3) \end{matrix}$

In order to compute P(e|s, M), in a preferred embodiment, it is assumed that the evidence can be separated into non-overlapping sets, [e₁ . . . e_(N)], that are independently generated from some distribution under an associated model [M₁ . . . M_(N)], given the target sequence. This independence assumption can be written as: P(e|s,M)=Π_(i=1) ^(N) [P(e _(i) |s,M _(i) ∈M)]  (4) and stated as:

-   -   Assumption 1: Evidence can be separated into distinct sets, such         that the evidence in each set is conditionally independent of         all others, given the target sequence;         where each e_(i) has a model M_(i) associated with it. This will         allow a framework to be constructed in which it is possible to         combine arbitrarily many sources of evidence in a         computationally efficient manner. In a preferred embodiment, a         model R∈M is associated with a target sequence prior. Given this         assumption we can restate (3) as follows:

$\begin{matrix} \frac{{P\left( s \middle| R \right)}{\prod\limits_{i = 1}^{N}{P\left( {\left. e_{i} \middle| s \right.,M_{i}} \right)}}}{\sum\limits_{j = 1}^{S}{{P\left( s_{j} \middle| R \right)}{\prod\limits_{i = 1}^{N}{P\left( {\left. e_{i} \middle| s_{j} \right.,M_{i}} \right)}}}} & (5) \end{matrix}$

Thus, in a preferred embodiment, the conditional probability of expression (1) can be computed by computing the target sequence prior, P(s|R), and each of the evidence likelihoods, P(e_(i)|s, M_(i)).

The denominator in expression (5) is constant with respect to s and therefore does not affect the ranking, rather it is a normalisation factor on computed probability values. In a preferred embodiment this value is estimated as the sum of a subset of the most probable sequences and a constant, to overcome the problem of having to compute the conditional probability over all sequences in S (see expressions 13-15 below). This approach is reasonable due to the Zipfian nature of many natural language phenomena, where a minority of likely events carry the majority of the probability mass. The Zipfian distribution is an instance of a power law distribution, in which the frequency of a given event is approximately inversely proportional to its rank.

Expression (5) provides a principled approach to combining different sources of evidence about text entry intentions, and in the preferred system of the present invention is implemented by a set of trained models R, M₁, M₂, . . . generating a set of sequences S_(R), S₁, S₂, . . . and an associated set of conditional likelihood values R_(R), P₁, P₂, . . . given a source of evidence e₁, e₂, . . . . The model R is used to compute the prior target sequence probability P(s|R), while each model M₁, M₂, . . . computes the respective evidence likelihood P(e_(i)|s, M_(i)). Each model outputs a set of sequences S_(i) and a set of associated conditional probabilities P_(i). Each model M₁, M₂, . . . may comprise one or more sub-models. The probability generator PG takes the sequences and associated conditional probabilities as input and outputs a final set of sequences S_(F) associated with probability values P_(F). The probability generator PG can combine the predictions as described in the preferred process above, i.e. the predictions are ranked in order of probability and any duplicate predictions are simply removed. The set of sequences S_(F) associated with the final probability values P_(F) can be presented, for example in a list format, on a user interface of the system, for user review and selection. The user interacts with the system by making prediction selections or manipulating the device on which the system resides in other ways, thus updating the evidence. Each model R, M₁ . . . M_(N) may be updated as text is input into the system.

The present invention provides two preferred methods for computing evidence likelihoods within a probabilistic framework by marginalising over candidate interpretations of the evidence, represented in a graph framework, although other methods may be utilised. These two preferred methods will now be discussed.

Candidate Model 1

When forming an estimate of the likelihood of the evidence from a single evidence source, P(e_(i)|s, M_(i)), it is often helpful to express the model in terms of ‘candidates’, which are intermediate stages between the ‘user-intended’ sequence, and the observed evidence. If expressed in terms of candidates, the likelihood P(e_(i)|s, M_(i)) can be re-written as: P(e|s,M)=Σ_(j=1) ^(K) P(e|c _(j) ,s,M _(candidate))P(c _(j) |s,M _(sequence))  (6) where c_(j) is a single candidate, and there are now two submodels of M for a given evidence source: the candidate model M_(candidate) and the sequence model M_(sequence). The key assumption here is as follows:

-   -   Assumption 2: The likelihood, under the model in question, can         be expressed as a marginalization over candidates, where the         evidence is conditionally independent of the target sequence         given the candidate.

Applying this assumption, the dependence on s can be dropped from the evidence term: P(e|s,M)=Σ_(j=1) ^(K) P(e|c _(j) ,s,M _(candidate))P(c _(j) |s,M _(sequence))  (7)

The properties of the candidate model can also be encoded in the form of graphical models describing the relationship between the variables and models, for example as shown below:

Candidate Model 2

Another variant of the candidate model first transforms the evidence likelihood using Bayes' rule:

$\begin{matrix} {{P\left( {\left. e \middle| S \right.,M} \right)} = \frac{{P\left( {\left. s \middle| e \right.,M} \right)}{P\left( e \middle| M \right)}}{P\left( s \middle| M \right)}} & (8) \end{matrix}$

In an embodiment, the evidence conditional sequence probability can be re-written as: P(s|e,M)=Σ_(j=1) ^(K) P(s|c _(j) ,e,M _(sequence))P(c _(j) |e,M _(candidate))  (9) where c_(j) is a single candidate, and as before, there are two submodels of M for a given evidence source: the candidate model M_(candidate) and the sequence model M_(sequence). In this case, the key assumption is:

-   -   Assumption 3: The likelihood, under the model in question, can         be expressed as a marginalization over candidates, where the         target sequence is conditionally independent of the evidence,         given the candidate.

Applying this assumption, the dependence on s can be dropped from the evidence term: P(s|e,M)=Σ_(j=1) ^(K) P(s|c _(j) ,e,M _(sequence))P(c _(j) |e,M _(candidate))  (10)

The graphical model for this version of the candidate model is as follows:

and the full evidence likelihood is:

$\begin{matrix} {{P\left( {\left. e \middle| s \right.,M} \right)} = \frac{\sum\limits_{j = 1}^{K}{{P\left( {\left. s \middle| c_{j} \right.,M_{sequence}} \right)}{P\left( {\left. c_{j} \middle| e \right.,M_{candidate}} \right)}{P\left( e \middle| M \right)}}}{P\left( s \middle| M \right)}} & (11) \end{matrix}$ Specific Model

Using the general and candidate models, we now present a specific example of the system with reference to FIG. 2, which illustrates a preferred instantiation of the system in which the prediction engine takes evidence from two distinct sources: context and input. However, as stated above, the system is not limited to taking the context and input sources as evidence. If other, or additional, evidence sources are used the system will be correspondingly configured to generate predictions on the basis of such evidence sources.

Informally, the context represents the observed evidence about what the user has already entered, while the input represents the observed evidence about what the user is currently entering. For instance, in English, if the user has entered the sequence “My name is B”, we might consider the context evidence to be the sequence “My name is”, and the input evidence to be the sequence “B”. This is however, only by way of example, and it should be noted that in the most general form, the model says nothing concrete about the specific form of the observed evidence. For instance, the input evidence might actually be a series of touch coordinates from a virtual ‘keyboard’.

As shown in FIG. 2, the evidence (input and context) is used as input to the prediction engine, within which there are preferably three models R, M_(context), M_(input), each of which is preferably comprised of at least two sub-models (character model, unigram model; candidate model, language model; candidate model, prefix match model). As can be seen in FIG. 2, the prediction engine preferably comprises a target sequence prior model R. Although preferred, the system is not limited to embodiments which include a target sequence prior model R.

The target sequence prior model R consists of

-   -   Character Model—implements a distribution over sequences in a         language without the concept of a fixed vocabularly. Usually         implemented as a Markov model over character sequences.     -   A character model is a sequence model built from characters         instead of words. For instance, if the training set is         “explaining”, a unigram character model might look like this:     -   P(e)=0.1     -   P(x)=0.1     -   P(p)=0.1     -   P(l)=0.1     -   P(a)=0.1     -   P(i)=0.2     -   P(n)=0.2     -   P(g)=0.1     -   A trigram character model might be as follows:     -   P(e)=0.1     -   P(x|e)=1.0     -   P(p|ex)=1.0     -   P(l|xp)=1.0     -   P(a|pl)=1.0     -   P(i|la)=1.0     -   P(n|ai)=1.0     -   P(i|in)=1.0     -   P(n|ni)=1.0     -   P(g|in)=1.0     -   Unigram Model—implements a distribution over sequences in a         language without taking context into account, internally         treating each sequence as an atomic entity.     -   For example, if the training set is “the dog chased the cat”,         the corresponding unigram language model might be:     -   P(the)→0.4     -   P(dog)→0.2     -   P(chased)→0.2     -   P(cat)→0.2

The context evidence model M_(context) is comprised of

-   -   Candidate Model—implements a conditional distribution over         context observations given a particular candidate         interpretation.     -   Sequence Model—implements a conditional distribution over         sequences in a language, or set of languages, given a particular         context. In FIG. 2, the sequence model is illustrated as a         language model which, in a preferred embodiment, comprises a set         of language models corresponding to different languages, e.g.         LM_(French), LM_(German), LM_(English), etc.

The input evidence model M_(input) is comprised of

-   -   Candidate Model—implements a conditional distribution over input         observations given a particular candidate interpretation.     -   Sequence Model—implements a conditional distribution over         candidates given an intended target sequence. This model is         illustrated in FIG. 2 as a “prefix match model”.

Each model, including the target sequence prior model R, may be updated with user entered text, depending on the scenario. By using dynamic language models, the system is able to more accurately predict a given user's intended text sequence.

Each model outputs a set of sequences S_(R), S_(context), S_(input) and associated probability estimates P_(R), P_(context), P_(input) which are used as input for the probability generator PG. The probability generator PG combines the probability estimates P_(R), P_(context), P_(input) output from the models to generate a set of probability values P_(F) for the final sequence predications S_(F).

The final predictions S_(F) can be displayed to the user via a user interface for user review and selection, or used by the system to automatically correct erroneously entered text. Once a prediction has been selected, either automatically or by the user, this input is preferably added to the context evidence which is used to generate further predictions. If instead the user adds further input about the current word, by entering further characters, this is preferably added to the input evidence to alter the current probabilities assigned to the predictions.

The particulars of how the specific system of this embodiment may be generated from the mathematical basis will now be explained.

Instantiating expression (5) with the two evidence sources yields:

$\begin{matrix} \frac{{P\left( s \middle| R \right)}{P\left( {\left. {context} \middle| s \right.,M_{context}} \right)}{P\left( {\left. {input} \middle| s \right.,M_{input}} \right)}}{Z} & (12) \end{matrix}$ where Z=the normalisation constant, approximate to: Σ_(j=1) ^(|S|) P(s _(j) |R)P(context|s _(j) ,M _(context))P(input|s _(j) ,M _(input))  (13)

This approximation is implemented in the system as follows. Let us consider a function z over a set of sequences T, such that: z(T)=Σ_(j=1) ^(|T|) P(s _(j) |R)P(context|s _(j) ,M _(context))P(input|s _(j) ,M _(input))  (14) Z is computed as: Z=z(T)+z({u})*k  (15) where u represents an “unknown” sequence, and k is an estimate of |S|−|T|, where |S| is the number of sequences in the set of all possible target sequences, and |T| is the number of sequences for which at least one of the underlying evidence models has a “known” estimate. Each individual evidence conditional model M will return an estimate of P(e|u, M), i.e. a distribution over evidence observations given the “unknown” sequence. In essence, this means that each evidence conditional model is responsible for its own distributional smoothing, but this must be related to k which is proportional to the overall estimated number of “unknown” sequences. In practice, each model will “know” about a set of sequences S′ where S′⊂S, and estimates of P(e|s, M) will be constant and equivalent to P(e|u, M) for all s ∉S′. Smoothing of this nature is the means by which the system takes into account the varying levels of confidence in the models associated with each evidence source.

According to expressions (12) and (14), in order to determine the conditional probability P(s∈S|e, M) for the example instantiation of the specific system, the following estimates are computed: a target sequence prior P(s|R); a context likelihood P(context|s, M_(context)); and an input likelihood P(input|s, M_(input)), Each of these estimates and how it may be computed is discussed below.

Target Sequence Prior

The target sequence prior is preferably computed as follows:

${P\left( s \middle| R \right)} = \left\{ \begin{matrix} {P\left( s \middle| R_{unigram} \right)} & {{if}\mspace{14mu}\left( {s \in V} \right)} \\ {P\left( s \middle| R_{character} \right)} & {otherwise} \end{matrix} \right.$ where V is the set of sequences contained in R_(unigram) and the implementation of the models is according to known techniques for constructing smoothed frequency-based unigram language models and smoothed Markov chain character models. A number of applicable techniques for implementing these models are listed below. However, other suitable techniques not listed also apply.

-   -   Smoothed n-gram term or character models (known in the art).     -   Adaptive multi language models as described in <ref: UK patent         application no. 0917753.6>.     -   PPM (prediction by partial matching) language models, as         described in e.g. <ref:Scheffler 2008>.     -   Morphological analysis engines configured to generate sequences         probabilistically from constituent lexical components.

By including a target sequence prior model R, the system provides an improved accuracy of intended sequence prediction. Furthermore, the target sequence prior model R enables character-based inference of unseen target sequences, i.e. the system is better able to infer unknown target sequences to approximate across all possible target sequences.

Context Likelihood

The context likelihood, P (context|s, M_(context)), is preferably estimated by means of the second candidate model to provide expression (16) below. Although this is the preferred means to estimate the likelihood, the invention is not limited to the likelihood being estimated in this way.

$\begin{matrix} {{P\left( {\left. {context} \middle| s \right.,M_{context}} \right)} = \frac{\begin{matrix} {\sum\limits_{j = 1}^{K}{P\left( {\left. s \middle| c_{j} \right.,M_{{context} - {sequence}}} \right)}} \\ {{P\left( {\left. c_{j} \middle| {context} \right.,M_{{context} - {candidate}}} \right)}{P\left( {context} \middle| M_{context} \right)}} \end{matrix}}{P\left( s \middle| M_{context} \right)}} & (16) \end{matrix}$

Thus, to determine the context likelihood, each of the following are computed: a context sequence estimate P(s|c_(j), M_(context-sequence)); a context candidate estimate P(c_(j)|context, M_(context-candidate)); a context prior estimate P(context|M_(context)); and a target sequence prior estimate P (s|M_(context)). Each of these estimates and how it may be computed is discussed below.

Context Sequence Estimate

The context sequence estimate P(s|c_(j), M_(context-sequence)) is the probability of the target sequence s given a particular candidate sequence c_(j), under the context sequence model. Formally the context sequence model is a function that returns the probability of a target sequence given a context sequence, i.e. ƒ_(s)(t_(target), t_(context))=P(t_(target)|t_(context), θ_(S)) where θ_(S) are the parameters of the model. Thus, the context sequence probability is computed as: P(s|c_(i), S)=ƒ_(S)(s, c_(i)). A wide range of different techniques can be used to compute this estimate, for example, smoothed frequency analysis on the context training data, in a similar way to equation (21), and as described in relation to the target sequence prior estimate. Alternatively, any of the following can be used, individually or in combination:

-   -   An n-gram language model (known in the art).     -   An adaptive multi language model as described in <ref: GB patent         application no. 0917753.6>.     -   A PPM (prediction by partial matching) language model, as         described in <ref:Scheffler 2008>.     -   A generative HMM (Hidden Markov Model) probabilistic         part-of-speech tagger <ref:Alias-i. 2008. LingPipe 4.1.0.         http://alias-i.com/lingpipe (accessed Sep. 26, 2011) or         Thede, S. M., Harper, M. P., 1999>     -   A natural language parser configured to return probabilities for         partial sentences, such as RASP <ref: Briscoe, E., J. Carroll         and R. Watson 2006>.     -   A neural network configured to accept as input features         representing the contextual and target sequence, and output         probabilities (known in the art).

The system is not limited to the above techniques; any other technique which can be used to compute the context sequence probability is applicable.

As stated previously, M_(context-sequence) may comprise a plurality of language models corresponding to a plurality of different languages. To determine the conditional probability of equation (16), the conditional probability is determined using the language model associated with the term. As an explanation, the previous example of the prediction term “pain” being drawn from an English language model (LM_(English)) and a French language model (LM_(French)) is referred to. In this situation, equation (16) is determined as P (context|pain, LM_(English)) and P(context|pain, LM_(French)), where “Pain” drawn from LM_(French) is different from that drawn from LM_(English), even though the predictions are lexically identical. By associating the term with the model from which it is drawn, the system simplifies the way in which lexically identical terms are dealt with, since only the most probable term is retained from two or more lexically identical terms. Furthermore, the system provides a simplification of the calculation of the conditional probabilities of equation (16). This is possible because, although lexically identical, the terms may have a different meaning in different languages and can therefore be treated as distinct.

Thus, turning to FIG. 2, the set of terms S_(context) generated by the model M_(context) may comprise terms from any one of the language models (or candidate models) contained within M_(context).

Context Candidate Estimate

The context candidate estimate P(c_(j)|context, M_(context-candidate)) is a function of the form: ƒ_(context-candidate)(t)=P(t|θ_(context-candidate)) where t is an arbitrary sequence and θ_(context-candidate) are the parameters of the model. Thus, the context candidate conditional estimate is computed as: P(c_(j)|context, M_(context-candidate))=ƒ_(context-candidate)(c_(j)).

In a preferred system, a context candidate is a sequence, and the set of context candidates is represented as a directed acyclic graph (DAG), where each node contains a subsequence consisting of one or more characters. Each of the edges is assigned a probability and, in a preferred embodiment, the DAG preferably also has the special property that each path is constrained to be the same length. This type of variant DAG is termed in this document as a probabilistic, constrained sequence graph (PCSG). Each individual candidate sequence is then represented by a unique path through the PCSG and the context candidate model function return value for a given candidate is computed as the probability of its representative path.

Formally, a PCSG consists of a 4-tuple containing a set of nodes N, a root node r, a set of directed edges E, and a set of parameters (probabilities) θ: G=(N,r,E,θ)  (17)

An edge between two nodes n and n′ is denoted by (n→n′), and the probability of moving from n to n′ along the edge is denoted by P(n′|n). A path through G begins at node r and follows exactly one outgoing edge from each visited node until reaching a node that contains no outgoing edges. The following properties hold of G:

-   -   1) G is a directed, acyclic graph (DAG)     -   2) ∀n ∈N·∃m·(m→n)∈E         n=r i.e. all nodes except for the root must have at least one         incoming edge.     -   3) ∃m, k∈N. ∀n∈N. (m→n)∈E         (n→k)∈E i.e. all paths branching from a given node rejoin         immediately at a subsequent common node. This property severely         constrains the structure of the graph and implies that all paths         have the same length, mitigating normalisation requirements on         path probability computations.

The context candidate model function computes the probability of a given path as follows (equated with the context candidate estimate): P(c _(j)|context,M _(context-candidate))=ƒ_(context-candidate)(c _(j))=P(p _(j) |G)  (18) where P(p_(j)|G) is the path likelihood, computed as the product of each of the edges in the path: P(p _(j) |G)=P(n ₁ |r)Π_(k=2) ^(K) P(n _(k) |n _(k-1))  (19) where K is the number of edges in the path. It can be noted that this preferred formulation amounts to an implicit independence assumption between nodes. This is so because in this case the sequential probability of the candidate sequence is not modelled, rather the probability of variations within the candidates is modelled. Hence, the following property holds over the probabilities on edges: ∀n∈N·Σ _((n→m)∈ζ) P(m|n)=1  (20)

In other words, the probabilities on all outgoing edges from a given node n must sum to one. This also implies that the following holds: Σ_(i)P(p_(i)|G)=1 i.e. the sum over the probability of all paths in the PCSG equals one.

An example will help to clarify these concepts. Consider the following twelve context candidate sequences:

“Sunday at 3pm” “sunday at 3pm” “Sun at 3pm” “Sunday at 3 pm” “sunday at 3 pm” “Sun at 3 pm” “Sunday at 3p.m.” “sunday at 3p.m.” “Sun at 3p.m.” “Sunday at 3 p.m.” “sunday at 3 p.m.” “Sun at 3 p.m.”

These would be represented by the following PCSG (explicit word boundary denoted by T and the empty sequence by ‘Ø’):

Probabilities are assigned to the edges according to the context candidate model, following (19), for instance:

Candidate probabilities for the twelve sequences above are then generated from the PCSG as follows (showing just three examples for brevity):

-   -   P(“sunday at 3 pm”|“sunday at 3         pm”,C)=0.6*1.0*1.0*0.6*1.0*0.7=0.252     -   P(“Sunday at 3 pm”|“sunday at 3         pm”,C)=0.3*1.0*1.0*0.4*1.0*0.7=0.084     -   P(“Sun at 3 p.m.”|“sunday at 3         pm”,C)=0.1*1.0*1.0*0.4*1.0*0.3=0.012

The specifics of the model used to construct the DAG and assign probabilities to nodes will vary depending on the particular instance of the system. The above schema encodes instances of three general variations:

-   -   branch (potentially unambiguously) at word boundaries     -   branch at case variation     -   branch at lexical variation

It will be understood that any type of variation can be encoded in this framework. Another example would be to branch on previous suggestions, e.g. if the system had predicted both “on” and “in” and the user had selected “in”, this can be encoded as a branch with the weight of probability assigned to “in” but with a small probability assigned to “on” to represent the possibility that the user accidentally accepted the wrong suggestion. In the above case, the following principles are encoded:

-   -   ‘sunday’ with a lower case initial ‘s’ is less probable than the         abbreviated form ‘Sun’, which is itself less probable than the         full variant ‘Sunday’.     -   The tokenisation case where “pm” is separated from the number         “3” is slightly less probable than the case where it's not.     -   The period variant “p.m.” is somewhat less probable than the         non-period form “pm”.

A particular instance of the context candidate PCSG is preferably constructed algorithmically from an initial sequence s in the following manner:

-   -   1) Turn s into a PCSG by encapsulating it within a single node         n^(s), connected to the root.     -   2) Iteratively deconstruct n^(s) by introducing branching nodes         at variation points.

For example, the PCSG construction algorithm operating on an original sequence “sunday at 3 pm” is considered. Firstly step 1:

The system deploys a probabilistic tokeniser, resulting in the following:

Note that a modification will always take the form of a branch-and-rejoin structural insertion, due to PCSG property 3 above, with the special case being a branch of one node, which is a convenience for subsequent processing as it does not affect overall path probabilities. Edge probabilities are added according to the model, which is explained in further detail below. Continuing the algorithm, a case variant analyser is deployed:

And finally a lexical variant analyser is deployed:

Note that due to PCSG property 3, branches must converge before re-branching. This means that in some oases an empty node must be inserted, if two branch points occur contiguously.

Edge probabilities are preferably assigned to the PCSGs. The assignment of edge probabilities is preferably carried out with respect to the parameters of the context candidate model. The intuitive interpretation of these probabilities is twofold:

-   -   1) They represent an estimate of the likelihood that the user         intended the sequence assigned to a particular branch. For         example, if a user has entered “Dear ben”, we might want to         allow, with some probability, that they actually intended to         enter “Dear Ben”.     -   2) They represent a “backoff” likelihood that a particular         branch is a valid orthographic variant of the observed sequence.         For example, if the user has entered “See you on Thur”, an         alternative orthographic form of “Thur” would be “Thurs”.

The probability assigned to a particular edge can also be influenced by the estimated likelihood of that orthographic variant given some background model information. For instance, the context sequence model S can actually be reused to obtain an estimate of the likelihood of different orthographic variants, which can be used in combination with other probabilistic measures to yield branch probabilities. Utilising the context sequence model in this manner means that the context candidate model C actually contains an instance of the context sequence model S, which results in an obvious violation of the independence assumption between the candidate and sequence models (property 7 above); however, this assumption is never actually called upon in the context case so it is relatively safe.

An example will help to clarify. In a preferred embodiment, it is assumed that the context candidate model assigns probabilities using the following algorithm:

-   -   1) Observed sequence receives 0.8 probability; others receive         the balance uniformly.     -   2) Values are scaled by the context sequence model estimates.     -   3) Values are normalised to comply with PCSG property (19)         above.

From the above PCSG example, the following branch can be considered:

As “sunday” is the original observation, it will initially be assigned a probability of 0.8 by stage one of the above algorithm, and the other edges will each be assigned 0.1. For the example where the estimates returned by the context sequence model are as follow:

-   -   P(“sunday”|C^(S))=0.01     -   P(“Sunday”|C^(S))=0.04     -   P(“Sun”|C^(S))=0.02         where C^(S) denotes that the context candidate model is         utilising the context sequence model in this case. Thus, in this         example the unnormalised and normalised (rounded) probabilities         assigned to each edge are as follows (respectively):

Context Prior Estimate

The context prior, P(context|M_(context)) can be approximated by normalising the frequency of the original sequence t associated with context

$\begin{matrix} {{P\left( {context} \middle| M_{context} \right)}\overset{\sim}{=}\frac{{freq}(t)}{\sum_{t^{\prime}}{{freq}\left( t^{\prime} \right)}}} & (21) \end{matrix}$ where freq(t) is the frequency of sequence t in the training data and the denominator is the sum of the frequencies of all sequences in the training data. The sequence “t” in expression (21) is the current context, as input into the system. The context prior weights the probability values of predictions according to the probability that the corresponding model from which the prediction was drawn, comprises a given context sequence. To do this, the context prior weights the predictions values according to the estimate of expression (21).

In practice, this estimate would be smoothed, for example by positing an occurrence assumption on unseen sequences, or by backing off to restricted (lower order) estimates in instances where the full sequence is unseen. For example, if the context is a trigram, the prediction engine may be configured to back off to constituent bigram or unigram estimates.

The context prior provides a dual function: It helps to normalise the probability estimate; and provides simple ‘model detection’ when the context model is unable to provide useful information. If the context sequence estimate is uninformative (such as when the last term is unknown to an N-gram model), the context prior estimate will weight more heavily the model with the most likely context, promoting the predictions of this model above those from other models. The “most likely context” is the maximum of estimate (21) over the set of models, for example over the set of language models LM_(English), LM_(French), LM_(German) etc. For example, if the context is “The dog chased”, it would be expected that this is significantly more likely to appear in English than in French. Thus, the conditional probability of equation (21) will be greatest for LM_(English), and the probability generator will therefore weight the probability values of predictions drawn from LM_(English) more heavily than those drawn from LM_(French); thus LM_(English) is ‘favoured’ by the context prior estimate.

Thus, the context prior estimate weights more heavily the most appropriate language model from a plurality of language models relating to a plurality of languages, given the context. In this sense, the context prior estimate is able to detect the language in which someone is inputting text.

Target Sequence Prior Estimate

The target sequence prior, P(s|M_(context)) can be estimated using smoothed frequency analysis on the training data, in a similar way to the context prior estimate, equation (21), e.g. the target sequence prior can be approximated by normalising the frequency of the target sequence over all sequences in the context training data

${P\left( s \middle| M_{context} \right)}\overset{\sim}{=}\frac{{freq}(s)}{\sum\limits_{s^{\prime}}{{freq}\left( s^{\prime} \right)}}$ where freq(s) is the frequency of the target sequence in the training data and the denominator is the sum of all the frequencies of all target sequences in the training data. The denominator can equivalently be approximately determined as the total number of terms in the training data (counting duplicates). Input Likelihood

The input likelihood, P(input|s, M_(input)), is estimated by means of the first candidate model: P(input|s,M _(input))=Σ_(j=1) ^(K) P(input|c _(j) ,M _(input-candidate))P(c _(j) |s,M _(input-sequence))  (22)

Thus, to determine the input likelihood, the following estimates need to be computed: an input candidate estimate, P (input|c_(j), M_(input-candidate)); and an input sequence estimate. P(c_(j)|s, M_(input-sequence)). Each estimate is described below.

Input Candidate Estimate

The input candidate estimate, P(input|c_(j), M_(input-candidate)) is defined as a function on observed input events and sequences: ƒ_(input-candidate)(i,t)=P(i|t, θ_(input-candidate)) where θ_(input-candidate) are the parameters of the model. An arbitrary input observation i is encoded in an input sequence intention structure (ISIS), which is an ordered list of sets of sequences mapped to probabilities: {(t ₁₁ →P(i ₁ |t ₁₁),(t ₁₂ →P(i ₁ |t ₁₂) . . . },{(t ₂₁ →P(i ₂ |t ₂₁),(t ₂₂ →P(i ₂ |t ₂₂), . . . }, . . .

Note that each individual estimate has the form P(i_(j)|t_(jk)), i.e. if the user had intended to enter the sequence t_(jk), what's the probability that we would have observed input event i_(j). Consider the following ISIS example:

$\quad\begin{bmatrix} \left\{ {\left( H\rightarrow 0.5 \right),\left( h\rightarrow 0.3 \right),\left( g\rightarrow 0.1 \right),\left( j\rightarrow 0.1 \right)} \right\} \\ \left\{ {\left( e\rightarrow 0.8 \right),\left( w\rightarrow 0.1 \right),\left( r\rightarrow 0.1 \right)} \right\} \end{bmatrix}$

This encodes the scenario in which the system estimates that had the user intended to enter, e.g., the character ‘H’ followed by the character ‘e’, so the observed input events would be expected to have the respective probabilities of 0.5 and 0.8.

The method by which these probability distributions are generated is not the subject of this disclosure. Rather it is highlighted that a range of techniques are applicable, for instance:

-   -   Distributions can be generated on the basis of the characters         that surround a given target key on a particular keyboard         layout, e.g. for a QWERTY keyboard, if the user tapped the area         corresponding to the “H” key, the characters “G” and “J” might         be included in the ISIS, with some probability.     -   Distributions can be generated on the basis of the distances (or         some function of the distances, such as the square etc.) between         the touch coordinate (on a touch-screen virtual keyboard) and         the coordinates of designated keys.

In the preferred system, an input candidate is a sequence, and the set of input candidates is represented as an extended PCSG (EPCSG). An EPCSG is a PCSG but with one additional structure that violates standard PCSG properties (defined below). As in the context case, each individual candidate sequence is represented by a unique path through the EPCSG and the input candidate model function return value for a given candidate is computed as the normalised probability of its representative path.

The input candidate EPCSG generation process starts with an ordered list of sets of sequence-probability pairs, generated by the system from user interaction, where each subset represents a probability distribution over user input sequence intentions.

The algorithm to generate an input candidate EPCSG from an input ISIS has two stages:

-   -   1) Convert the ISIS into a PCSG.     -   2) Insert additional generalising structures, resulting in an         EPCSG.         Stage one is straightforward. Beginning with the root node of a         new PCSG, the algorithm constructs branches for each         distribution in the ISIS. The result of stage one for the above         ISIS is as follows:

Stage two embellishes the existing PCSG with two additional structures. The first is an empty node sub-path (which falls within the PCSG framework), and the second is a ‘wildcard’ structure (which converts the PCSG into an EPCSG). The following is an example application of stage two:

The wildcard symbol (denoted by ‘*’) is actually shorthand for a branch that includes/generates every symbol in the character set. The wildcard structure is a constrained cycle and therefore violates the acyclic property of the standard PCSG. The EPCSG extension licenses the use of a wildcard cycle at convergence points only. The values e and w are pre-specified probability constants. Note that in this case each branch point has the empty node addition (two in this case), and each convergence point has the wildcard addition (one in this case). These generalisations allow for instances where the user omitted one or more characters from the target sequence (with the wildcard probability w) or inserted one or more erroneous characters (with the empty node probability e). It will be understood that the specifics of how these extra structures are added to the PCSG will vary with different instantiations of the system, depending on computational resources, sequence model strength, etc.

The empty node sub-path enables the system to disregard a character which has been erroneously entered by the user, and which would otherwise lead to an incorrect chain through the PCGS.

With the addition of the generalisation structures (especially the wildcard branch), the number of paths through the PCSG grows rapidly. For instance, given a character set size of 50 there are 1020 unique paths through the simple PCSG above. For a real-world ISIS, there can be tens or even hundreds of thousands of unique paths. The preferred system preferably utilises the following techniques, alone or in any combination, to handle this combinatorial explosion:

-   -   A trie (as known in the art) is used to ignore paths that are         not prefixes of sequences within the prediction vocabulary.     -   Probabilistic thresholding is used to prune paths that are         relatively improbable. A threshold is set on the ratio between         the current most probable sequence and the differential for less         probable sequences. Given threshold t, and a currently         investigated path length L, a path n₁ . . . n_(L) is pruned if         the following holds:

$\begin{matrix} {\frac{{P\left( n_{1} \middle| r \right)}{\prod\limits_{j = 2}^{L}{P\left( n_{j} \middle| n_{j - 1} \right)}}}{\arg\;{\max_{m}\left\lbrack {{P\left( m_{1} \middle| r \right)}{\prod\limits_{j = 2}^{L}{P\left( m_{j} \middle| m_{j - 1} \right)}}} \right\rbrack}} < t} & (23) \end{matrix}$

-   -   The input sequence model T is also used for probabilistic         thresholding. Given a distinct or tied threshold t, and a set of         sequences formed by all paths of length L: {c₁, . . . , c_(K)} a         given path p representing a particular sequence c_(p) is pruned         if the following holds:

$\begin{matrix} {\frac{P\left( c_{p} \middle| T \right)}{\arg\;{\max_{j}\left\lbrack {P\left( c_{j} \middle| T \right)} \right\rbrack}} < T} & (24) \end{matrix}$

Other techniques which are suitable for handling the combinatorial explosion can also be employed by themselves, or in combination with one or all of the above techniques.

Input Sequence Estimate

The input sequence estimate, P(c_(j)|s, M_(input-sequence)) is a distribution over candidate sequences given a target sequence, and can be estimated as a normalised indicator function:

$\begin{matrix} {{P\left( {\left. c_{j} \middle| x \right.,M_{{input} - {sequence}}} \right)} = \frac{\delta\left( {s,c_{j}} \right)}{z}} & (25) \end{matrix}$ where δ(t, t′)=1 if t′ is a prefix of t and 0 otherwise, and Z=Σ_(k)δ(s, c_(k)), i.e. the sum over all candidates.

Note that if uniqueness of candidates is assumed, and the set of candidates is allowed to include all possible sequences, the normalisation factor can be re-cast: Z=length(s). For example, given the target sequence “the”, there will always be precisely three matching candidates: “t”, “th” and “the”.

Thus, the present invention provides a general text prediction engine and system, and a specific example of that text prediction engine or system, which is configured to generate a set of sequence predictions S_(F), each with an associated probability value P_(F).

The present invention also provides a corresponding method for processing user text input. Turning to FIG. 1 and the above described system, the method comprises receiving text input into a user interface, e.g. of an electronic device; generating, using a text prediction engine, sequence predictions S_(F) and associated probability values P_(F); and providing the sequence predictions to the user interface.

As discussed in relation to the system, the general method comprises generating sequence predictions and associated probability values by a text prediction engine which comprises one or more models. In a preferred embodiment, the method comprises generating sequence predictions from a target prior model R and from at least one model M₁, M₂, etc which uses at least one evidence source e₁, e₂, etc. to generate predictions. As discussed above, in relation to the system and, in particular, expressions (12) to (15), the method comprises generating normalised probability values by estimating a normalisation factor for the probability values by summing the probability values for the n most probable sequence predictions and a constant representative of the remaining possible sequence predictions.

With reference to FIG. 2, in the preferred embodiment, the final set of predictions S_(F) and associated probability values P_(F) are generated by a probability generator PG, from sets of predictions S_(R), S_(context) S_(input) which have been drawn from a target prior model R, a context model M_(context), and an input model M_(input), respectively. In this embodiment, the context of a user entered sequence is used as evidence to draw predictions from the context model M_(context), and a user entered sequence relating to the current word the user is attempting to enter is used as evidence to draw predictions from the input model M_(input).

Other aspects of the method are analogous to the system described above, e.g. in one embodiment of the method, the sequence predictions are only provided to the user interface if their corresponding probability values are each greater than or equal a first threshold value.

As discussed above in relation to a system implementing generalisation structures (and especially a wildcard branch) in a PCSG to determine a context candidate estimate, in a preferred embodiment of the method, at least one of the set of sequence predictions corresponds to an adjusted or corrected version of text input by a user into the user interface.

Other aspects of the method of the present invention can be readily determined by analogy to the above system description.

The following is a non exhaustive list of embodiments which may be claimed in this application:

1. A system comprising:

-   -   a text prediction engine comprising:     -   at least one model configured to generate from an evidence         source a set of sequences with associated probability estimates;     -   a model configured to generate a set of sequences with         associated probability estimates; and     -   a probability generator configured to receive each set of         sequences with associated probability estimates and to generate         a set of sequence predictions with associated probability         values.         2. The system of embodiment 1 comprising a plurality of models         configured to generate from a plurality of evidence sources a         plurality of sets of sequences with associated probability         estimates.         3. The system of embodiment 1 or 2, wherein the probability         generator is configured to generate the set of sequence         predictions based on any number of independent evidence sources.         4. The system of embodiment 3, wherein one of the evidence         sources comprises user inputted text. The user inputted text can         be input by user selection, character entry, voice recognition,         etc.         5. A system comprising:     -   a user interface configured to receive text input by a user;     -   a text prediction engine according to the first aspect, or any         other suitable one, configured to receive the text input from         the user interface and to generate sequence predictions with         associated probability values;     -   wherein the text prediction engine is further configured to         provide the sequence predictions to the user interface.         6. The system of embodiment 5, wherein the text prediction         engine comprises:     -   a context model configured to receive text input by a user and         to generate a set of sequences and associated probability         estimates;     -   an input model configured to receive text input by the user and         to generate a set of sequences and associated probability         estimates;     -   a model configured to generate a set of sequences and associated         probability estimates; and     -   a probability generator configured to receive each set of         sequences and associated probability estimates from the         plurality of models and to generate the set of sequence         predictions and associated probability values.         7. The system of embodiment 6, wherein the user interface is         configured to display the sequence predictions for user         selection.         8. The system of embodiment 7, wherein the system orders the         sequence predictions by the probability values and displays them         as an ordered set.         9. The system of one of embodiment 6-8, wherein the system         preferably uses the sequence predictions to automatically         correct erroneously entered text which has been input into the         user interface.         10. The system of embodiment 6-8, wherein the text prediction         engine is configured to generate sequence predictions which are         based on any number of independent evidence sources.         11. A method for processing user text input comprising:     -   receiving text input into a user interface;     -   generating, using a text prediction engine, sequence predictions         and associated probability values;     -   providing the sequence predictions to the user interface.         12. The method of embodiment 11, wherein the method comprises         displaying the sequence predictions on the user interface for         user selection.         13. The method of embodiment 12, wherein the method comprises         ordering the sequence predictions by their associated         probability values.         14. The method of embodiment 14, comprising displaying the         ordered sequence predictions for user selection.         15. The method of any one of embodiment 11-14, comprising the         step of using the sequence predictions to automatically correct         erroneously entered text which has been input into the user         interface.         16. A text prediction engine for use in any one of the preceding         embodiments, wherein the text prediction engine comprises a         context model, an input model, a target prior model, and a         probability generator.         17. The text prediction engine of embodiment 16, wherein the         context model and input model are configured to receive the text         input by a user and to generate a set of sequences and         associated probability estimates.         18. The text prediction engine of embodiment 16 or 17, wherein         the target prior model is configured to generate a set of         sequences and associated probability estimates.         19. The text prediction engine of any of embodiments 16-18,         wherein the probability generator is configured to receive each         set of sequences and associated probability estimates from the         models and to generate a set of sequence predictions each         associated with a probability value.

It will be appreciated that this description is by way of example only; alterations and modifications may be made to the described embodiment without departing from the scope of the invention as defined in the claims. 

The invention claimed is:
 1. A text prediction system, comprising: one or more processors; memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: generate at least one first sequence prediction based on a first evidence source and a first model, wherein each of the at least one first sequence prediction comprises a first sequence and a first associated probability estimate; generate at least one second sequence prediction based on a second evidence source and a second model, wherein each of the at least one second sequence prediction comprises a second sequence and a second associated probability estimate; wherein the first associated probability estimate or the second associated probability estimate is weighted according to a probability that the first model or the second model comprises a given context sequence; and combine the at least one first sequence prediction and the at least one second sequence prediction into at least one combined sequence prediction based at least in part on the first associated probability estimate and the second associated probability estimate; and a display coupled to at least one of the one or more processors or the memory, wherein the display is configured to: output the at least one combined sequence prediction within a text entry graphical user interface.
 2. The text prediction system according to claim 1, wherein the at least one first sequence prediction and the at least one second sequence prediction are combined into at least one combined sequence prediction by ranking the at least one first sequence prediction and the at least one second sequence prediction and removing duplicate sequence predictions, wherein, the first sequence prediction or the second sequence prediction of the duplicate sequence predictions is removed dependent on which of the first associated probability estimate and the second associated probability estimate is lowest.
 3. The system according to claim 1, further comprising a prior model configured to generate at least one third sequence prediction, wherein each of the at least one third sequence prediction comprises a third sequence and a third associated probability estimate.
 4. The system according to claim 3, wherein: the first model comprises a context model and the second model comprises an input model, the first evidence source comprises a first sequence of characters from the text entry user interface and the second evidence source comprises a second sequence of characters from the text entry user interface; and wherein the prior model comprises a target prior model.
 5. The system according to claim 4, wherein: the input model comprises a candidate model and a language model; the context model comprises a candidate model and a prefix match model; and the target prior model comprises a character model and a unigram model.
 6. The system according to claim 1, wherein at least one of the at least one first sequence prediction or the at least one second sequence prediction are generated based at least in part on an uncertainty associated with the first evidence source or the second evidence source.
 7. The system according to claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the one or more processors to: approximately normalise the first associated probability estimate and the second associated probability estimate by estimating a normalisation factor for the first associated probability estimate and the second associated probability estimate.
 8. The system according to claim 7, further comprising a prior model configured to generate at least one third sequence prediction, wherein each of the at least one third sequence prediction comprises a third sequence and a third associated probability estimate.
 9. The system according to claim 1, wherein the first evidence source is modelled independently by the first model to generate the at least one first sequence prediction, and wherein the second evidence source is modelled independently by the second model to generate the at least one second sequence prediction.
 10. The system according to claim 1, wherein the first evidence source comprises user inputted text, and wherein the first model comprises a plurality of language models corresponding to a plurality of different languages.
 11. The system according to claim 1, wherein the first evidence source is treated conditionally independent of the second evidence, given the at least one combined sequence prediction.
 12. The system according to claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the one or more processors to receive text from the text entry graphical user interface, to generate the at least one combined sequence prediction, and to provide the at least one combined sequence prediction to the text entry graphical user interface for output to the display.
 13. The system according to claim 12, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the one or more processors to input automatically one of the at least one combined sequence prediction into the system if a probability associated with the one of the at least one combined sequence prediction is equal to or greater than a threshold probability estimate.
 14. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing a set of instructions, that when executed by a processor, cause the processor to process a sequence of characters entered into a user interface, wherein processing the sequence of characters comprises: receiving the sequence of characters from the user interface at least one first sequence prediction based at least in part on a first model and a first evidence source, wherein the first evidence source comprises the sequence of characters, wherein each of the at least one first sequence prediction comprises a first sequence and a first associated probability estimate; generating at least one second sequence prediction based on a second evidence source and a second model, wherein each of the at least one second sequence prediction comprises a second sequence and a second associated probability estimate; wherein the first associated probability estimate and the second associated probability estimate are weighted according to a probability that the first model or the second model comprises a given context sequence; combining the at least one first sequence prediction and the at least one second sequence prediction into at least one combined sequence prediction based at least in part on the first associated probability estimate and the second associated probability estimate; and visually outputting, via the user interface, the at least one combined sequence prediction.
 15. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 14, wherein the at least one first sequence prediction and the at least one second sequence prediction are combined into at least one combined sequence prediction by ranking the at least one first sequence prediction and the at least one second sequence prediction and removing duplicate sequence predictions, wherein, the first sequence prediction or the second sequence prediction of the duplicate sequence predictions is removed dependent on which of the first associated probability estimate and the second associated probability estimate is lowest.
 16. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 14, wherein at least one of the first associated probability estimate or the second associated probability estimate are approximately normalised, wherein approximately normalising the first associated probability estimate or the second associated probability estimate comprises estimating a normalisation factor for the first associated probability estimate or the second associated probability estimate.
 17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 14, wherein at least one of the first sequence prediction or the second sequence prediction corresponds to an adjusted or corrected version of text input by a user into the user interface.
 18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 14, wherein the at least one combined sequence prediction is output via a display associated with the user interface only if for each combined sequence prediction, a probability estimate associated with the combined sequence prediction is greater than or equal to a first threshold estimate.
 19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according claim 18, further comprising inputting automatically the combined sequence prediction if the combined sequence prediction has a probability estimate greater than or above a second threshold estimate. 